Lil Ed' & The Blues Imperials To Release JUMP START On June 5

Alligator Records has set a June 5, 2012 release date for Jump Start (AL 4949), the blistering new CD from Chicago's award-winning blues masters, Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials. Mixing smoking slide guitar boogies and raw-boned Chicago shuffles with the deepest slow-burners, Lil' Ed Williams and his rip-roaring Blues Imperials -- bassist James "Pookie" Young, guitarist Mike Garrett and drummer Kelly Littleton -- deliver gloriously riotous, rollicking and intensely emotional blues. Currently celebrating 24 history-making years together, Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials ply their musical talents with skills that have been honed to a razor's edge.

The band's wildly energetic and seriously soulful new CD Jump Start is jam-packed with Lil' Ed's incendiary slide playing and rough, passionate singing, as the ragged-but-right Blues Imperials cook like mad alongside him. Produced by Williams and Alligator president Bruce Iglauer, it is a tour-de-force of untamed slide guitar, rock solid rhythms, heartrending ballads and authentic deep blues vocals. Williams wrote or co-wrote 13 of the album's 14 songs, which all overflow with the band's full throttle drive and serious sense of fun. Jump Start reveals a band firing on all cylinders and ready to spread the genuine houserockin' fever to their biggest audience yet. "It's all blues, really," says Lil' Ed. "Some of it will make you dance, some will ease your soul."

Lil' Ed boasts a direct bloodline to blues history -- his uncle and musical mentor was the great Chicago slide guitarist, songwriter and recording artist J.B. Hutto. Live, Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials simply can't be beat as Ed breaks out the deepest back-bends, the highest toe-walks, and the most authentic electric slide-guitar blues being played today. Garrett's risk-taking rhythm guitar work and Littleton's conversational, old school drumming perfectly complement Lil' Ed's and Pookie's rambunctious playing.

Adding to the legend is Ed's storybook rise, taking him from working in a car wash to entertaining thousands of fans all over the world. He's made multiple appearances on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, and has brought his music to fans from Japan to Poland. According to The Chicago Tribune, "Williams represents one of the few remaining authentic links to pure Chicago blues."

Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials won the prestigious Blues Music Award for Band Of The Year in both 2007 and 2009 and also took home the Best Live Band Award in the 2011 Living Blues Critics' Poll. Williams was recently nominated for a 2012 Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year and his whole group again for Band Of The Year. They will perform on the Crossroads Stage at the Chicago Blues Festival on June 10, 2012.

"Long ago," recalls Lil' Ed, "Uncle J.B. told me, 'When you get the right guys in your band, you'll know.' When Mike and then Kelly joined up with me and Pookie, we just clicked. I knew. We are a family," says Lil' Ed, summing it all up. "And families stay together."